a foodie's wants, needs, and explorations

This summer, as with the last few, I have had the chance to take a few cooking classes! In previous summers I took bread baking classes at Le Pain Quotidien in Newport Beach, such as a pretzel making class, French bread, and enriched doughs such as brioche and challah. They were amazing classes! So this…

It’s difficult to believe that it has already been a year since my last post! This past year has been rather hectic, as I am currently just finishing up my first year of college. Luckily, I chose to attend college in one of the most food-friendly of places, Fort Collins, Colorado. I’ve heard rumors that…

Now that summer has arrived, I feel comfortable in saying that readers should expect a plethora of posts and photos. (At least in comparison with what they’ve been seeing lately) Summer is finally here, and I have 3 months off to enjoy it this time! I don’t have many far away travels scheduled this time…

It is very true that I have not written a post in a great while, and I apologize. I have been very short on time, and thus have not been cooking as much as I would like to. However, with the holidays came time off to cook and bake to my heart’s content! I posted…

On the very last day of my conference, they held a closing ceremony and a final TA meeting before checkout. During the ceremony, we all watched a slideshow of the 10 days that the TAs had put together with their own photos, followed by a 5 minute hugging session. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten…

Today, was the moment of truth. It was our final day at the Institute of Culinary Education, the restaurant simulation. Everyone was incredibly nervous: we had to create a restaurant with floor plan, hours, menus, etc, and cook three or more items from that menu in three hours. We needed to professionally plate a servomg…

Today was another one of our big days. This morning we all geared up in our professional attire and recieved an in-depth tour of Thomas Keller’s New York restaurant, Per Se. We were all quite excited to visit a restaurant of such a high caliber. The manager and a couple of other upper-level staff members…

Today was my favorite day of the program so far. I loved Chelsea Market. Honestly I could care less about having that free time at Times Square if we could’ve had more free time at the market. We went on an NYC food tour through it, and all got super stuffed. It started out at…

The sushi class many of us had been awaiting was today. We made a coconut milk mango rice pudding that was very sweet and tropical. We made various sushi rolls with imitation crab, real crab, salmon, tuna or smoked salmon with our own different twists on them. We also made summer rolls with shrimp, scallion…

Today we ventured aboard the subway to travel to our culinary class at Institute of Culinary Education. I’m really loving this school. In class we made a roasted chicken with herb butter rubbed under its skin that was probably the juiciest chicken I’ve ever had, with fantastic flavor. We also pan seared some ribeye, then…